Trash talk My city is running, or planning to run, a Blue Box recycling pilot project. They want to run the Blue Box program to reduce waste in the city and they plan to accomplish this by paying people not only to pick up the recycling every week, but also to sort glass from paper from aluminum. Never mind that the project was run some ten years ago and was determined to be not as good as other programs tested at the same time. It seems to me that they could accomplish the noble goal of reducing waste by imposing a garbage bag limit on the residents, which, at the same time, would reduce the number of garbage collectors needed and save the city money. It annoys me that they're introducing a program that ultimately is going to cost the taxpayers more money when another viable solution is available. In fact, the city I grew up in, not 20 minutes north of the city I live in now, has had huge success with a two bag per week limit. If you want more, you have to buy special stickers from the city or the garabage collectors will leave it there. In addition, my childhood home has a very large recycling depot that is well used by the residents even though they have to drive to the depot and sort the recycling themselves. Some, of course, would argue that a bag limit would motivate people to dump their excess garbage in the ditches and empty lots of the country side, but I think that if the city imposed the limit gradually, starting with something easy like six bags per week, they could reduce it down to two in time and people would adjust. Especially if they point out that this is saving the city, and them, money. Of course, this is simply a case of treating the symptoms instead of the disease. What really needs to happen is a global reduction on packaging and industrial waste. Residential garbage is a very small percentage of what goes into landfills and it's the factories and mass production plants that need to be regulated. Still, I think that if the consumers demand it in a loud enough voice, the companies will listen. And, what better way to accomplish that consumer demand than education, starting with reducing waste at home? |